Alone
by Rockport268
Summary: A short vignette of things gone wrong on an adventure. Uncle Donald is unconscious and Dewey tries to figure out what to do. Can be read independently or with "Familiar Words."


**Author's note: I did an author's ask meme over on Tumblr while writing _Familiar Words_ , and two people asked me to write "something that's already happened, retold from another character's perspective." Since I already had about half of it written, then, I decided to finish it. You can read _Familiar Words_ at fanfiction s/12799161/1/Familiar-Words.**

"Uncle Donald?" Dewey said, giving his uncle a gentle shake. "Uncle Donald, please wake up."

Uncle Donald remained still.

"Uncle Donald, _please_ ," he said again. " _Please_ wake up."

Dewey felt small and vulnerable, like that time when he was little and he'd stopped to look at something at the store and turned around to find that Uncle Donald and his brothers were gone. Except this was worse. Much, much worse. Because Uncle Donald wasn't _gone_ , he was _right there_. And he was _hurt_. Bad.

Suddenly, the "spirit of adventure," as Uncle Scrooge called it, seemed to leave him. It was bad enough that he and Uncle Donald had gotten separated from the rest of the group. Not that there was anything wrong with Uncle Donald-Dewey certainly felt safe with him-but they didn't have a map or most of their supplies or any way of contacting the others. And then that stupid mountain-creature had come out of nowhere and, well, Dewey wasn't hurt, Uncle Donald had made sure of that, but now Dewey was _alone_ with-with-

A small droplet fell to the floor, and then another, and another, and, with a sniffle, Dewey realized he was crying.

He sat down on the ground, staring at the small puddle his tears were making as if it would tell him what to do next. Uncle Donald was hurt, and he might be dying, and Dewey didn't have any way of contacting the others, and what they really needed to be doing was finding a way out of this stupid forest, but they couldn't because Uncle Donald was-

Calm down. Focus. Dewey was a Junior Woodchuck. A survivalist. He could get them out of this with just his wits and the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook.

...or, at least, he _would_ , if he ever attended meetings, or earned any badges besides knot-tying and candy bar selling (which had nothing to do with his business skills and everything to do with buying them himself with his saved-up allowance), or actually carried the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook around with him.

Where was Huey when you needed him?

Ok. Time for plan B. Yelling wasn't much of an option, since Uncle Scrooge had said the mountain pass was full of wild animals and precariously-balanced rocks that could come tumbling down at the slightest provocation (both of which Dewey now knew to be absolutely, one-hundred-percent true). Dewey needed to figure out another way to signal everyone else.

How about light? His flashlight wasn't bright enough, and it looked like the battery was starting to die, anyway ( _don't think about that don't think about that don't think about that_ ), but how about a fire? Then, maybe Uncle Scrooge and everyone would see the light or even the smoke from wherever they were and come find them.

Dewey thought. What was the first step to making a fire? Right-gather the flammable stuff that you were gonna set on fire. And step two was to gather some rocks to surround the fire so that it didn't accidentally spread. Or maybe gathering rocks was step one...whatever, it didn't matter as long as you didn't light the fire until you had both. Dewey started grabbing rocks and arranging them in a circle on the floor, close enough to Uncle Donald that Dewey could still keep an eye on him but still far enough away that he wouldn't accidentally set his uncle on fire.

Ok. Now back to step one-stuff to set on fire. Dewey looked around. All of the tree branches were too high for him to reach, and there wasn't much of anything flammable on the ground. Just more rocks. Plus his almost-dead flashlight-Uncle Donald's had been lost in the attack-and the clothing on their backs, which he was _pretty_ sure was flammable, but something about undressing your unconscious uncle felt super messed up, so that was definitely Plan Z.

Right! Dewey still had his backpack! He ran over to where he'd earlier dropped it on the ground and started foraging through it. A bunch of granola bars (nice), an extra canteen of water that Dewey had honestly forgotten about (score!), the pocket knife that Dewey wasn't actually supposed to have (he slipped that into his pocket for later), a compass (which would be a whole lot more helpful if Dewey knew which way was _out_ ), one of the tiny first aid kits that Huey had insisted they all carry (too bad bandaids weren't enough to fix Uncle Donald), bug spray (was that flammable?), and the notebook Dewey had brought along to, you know, take notes.

Hey, Uncle Scrooge had one, and if Dewey wanted to be an adventurer like him, he had to have one, too. Even if he hadn't written anything in it yet.

Either way, paper was _definitely_ flammable, so Dewey opened it up and put it in the middle of his circle of rocks. He grabbed two more rocks from the ground and started flicking them together, aiming his motions at what was hopefully soon going to be a campfire.

Hopefully.

"Dewey?"

Dewey whipped around to see Uncle Donald, eyes squinting at the sunlight, trying to pick himself up off the ground.

"Uncle Donald!" Dewey cried, dropping his rocks and rushing over to his uncle. Since Uncle Donald was trying to get up anyway, Dewey helped him, ignoring Huey's voice echoing in his head about how an injured person shouldn't be moved.

Uncle Donald was a little wobbly on his feet, so Dewey steadied him as he looked around like he was trying to get his bearings.

"What's that?" he asked, nodding toward Dewey's fire-in-the-making.

"I was trying to make a signal fire," Dewey said. "So everybody could find us."

Uncle Donald got that sad look on his face that he sometimes got when Dewey and his brothers brought up stuff like not having a mother, and his grip on Dewey tightened.

"Are you ok?" he asked, his eyes frantically looking Dewey over.

"Me?" Had Uncle Donald seen himself lately? Dewey wasn't the one he should be asking about. "I'm fine," Dewey said. "What about _you_?"

"I'm fine," Uncle Donald echoed.

Dewey decided that Uncle Donald actually had no idea how he was when he let go of him to try to ruffle his top feathers and almost fell flat on his face.

Uncle Donald scowled, catching himself on his nephew's shoulders. "Well, I will be fine, once we get out of here." He looked around. "Now, which way did we come from?" he asked.

That was the problem. The way they'd come from was now blocked by a huge pile of rocks that had fallen down the mountains around them. "That way," Dewey said, pointing to it. He dug the compass back out of his backpack. "Here," he said, handing it to his uncle.

Uncle Donald looked at the compass for a moment. Then, he nodded toward the trees on their left.

"We'll go that way," he said, taking a slow step in that direction and leaning heavily on Dewey, though Dewey could tell he was trying not to.

Relief flooded through Dewey. Uncle Donald was awake, he was ok, and he knew exactly where to go. They were gonna be ok.

 **Please review!**


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